


Hell Hath No Fury

by ProwlingThunder



Series: Fortune's Favors [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brotherhood of Steel - Freeform, Double Name Meanings, F/M, Gen, Gunners - Freeform, Institute takes Male Sole Survivor, Multiple Vault 111 Survivors, Nora is Displeased, There Were Raiders, There Were Super Mutants, There Where Ghouls, the Apocalypse happened
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-05-27 01:34:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 8,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6264385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nora's going to carve a path through the wasteland they call the Commonwealth, and smile the whole way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Monarch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops. Accidentally dropped two sections up here for Chapter 1. *Edit, edit*

She wakes up in the future and all she can think is, _my boys are gone._

-

 _There are people in Concord,_ Codsworth says, and she makes sure her cousin and their kids are settled, are safe, she shoves the cradles into the same room and drags a good mattress into the house and finds the rations stored in the cellar a few houses down and says, _Codsworth, keep them safe._

-

She goes to Concord.

-

She kills half the people in Concord. She smiles at the other half, and they stare, transfixed on her face, until she climbs into the power armor--

 _This nearly killed my husband,_ she thinks, remembering:

A battle. A rocket. A firefight.

Power armor stained black.

One love screaming and one love dying.

-

They all scream profanity but all she can hear is Chinese and they die just the same anyway.

-

She takes the survivors to her cousin. She takes the dead brother-in-arms to her cousin, too, to the community he died trying to find.

 ~~The young soldier~~   ~~ _Preston Garvey_~~

The young soldier runs himself raw and ragged with her, but they dig the grave and lay him to bed with honors.

~~_The soldier's name is Preston Garvey and his brother was Marcos Sung--_ ~~

All she can think is _her boys are gone_ and a grave isn't a grave without a body and a marker and she can't rest, not yet, not while there's a single grave without a name--

-

In the morning the young soldier knocks on her door and she's not asleep; she's been awake all night watching Phoenix and Harvey sleep, keeping vigil, because they're not going to take her cousin and their children too.

~~if she closes her eyes she dreams of power armor and her boys--~~

She doesn't sleep.

"Ma'am-- I didn't wake you, did I?"

The young soldier worries the rim of his hat and looks at her, and for all that he's taller than her he looks young and fragile and she wants to hug him.

They buried his brother yesterday and he's all alone now, the last soldier of an army, they're both alone and so she does, she hugs him and lets him grieve and she grieves with him.

~~her boys are gone and she doesn't remember if they were alive when scarface drug them out of their pods and she doesn't remember what that lab-suited woman was saying~~

~~her boys are gone and she may never find them, she's pragmatic but it hurts~~

-

Preston Garvey names her General while worrying the edge of his hat. His eyes are still fixed on her face.

She smiles at him when she accepts, half because she knows the way it stretches the smile even further, half because of the irony the promotion represents.

-

She doesn't know where to start looking for her boys.

~~she may never find them, they may be dead but she has to look even if she never sleeps again~~

Her young soldier asks her to help a settlement, and she goes.


	2. Glasswing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Accidentally posted this with Chapter 1. Meep. Here it is in it's own chapter section now.

Someone has kidnapped one of the girls from the settlement and her parents beg her to bring the child home.

She thinks about her own child, and the child she let her cousin have, who's just as much her son as if he came from her womb. She thinks about what she would do to the people who took them, if someone dared.

She promises to bring the youth home, and while the parents don't have faith, they are hopeful.

-

She promises to bring her home and nothing else.

She does not know what she will find, and she will not make a promise that she cannot keep.

-

She does not tell them: Hope is a killer. Hope is a lie.

She's pragmatic, but she holds this thing to her breast, and she will deny it to no one.

-

The girl is alive. Nora does not know if she would call her  _ whole _ but she is alive, and that is a start. She stuffs the raiders-- thieves, kidnappers,  _ rapists _ \--into cover and out of sight, and she and the girl camp there for the night.

There is a fire and a deep pot and water in a barrel, and those are all the fixings necessary for a hot bath.

She finds a small variety of only slightly-molding vegetables and she makes a stew for dinner. It's not much, but it must be something, because the girl falls upon it like a starving animal. After, she turns to her and asks, "Who are you, anyway?"

She thinks: I am a soldier. A mother. A wife. A lawyer.

She thinks: I am General King.

She says: "Miss Fortune."

"Misfortune?"

Nora smiles. "That too."

-

Hope dies a quiet death in the breasts of the parents when Nora takes her home. Something new flowers in it's place.

Loyalty. Faith. Trust.


	3. Metallic Cerulean

The whole state of Massachusetts is in ruins. Buildings crumble, greed and depravity and decay fester in the cracks.

Nora considers how badly civilization has fallen. She remembers it in it's golden glory, swept with lights and fast motorcycles, the sweetness of home, kisses made of whiskey on ice.

She likes the past better than she likes the future.

In the past, she had her boys.

-

There is gunfire in Georgetown, and in Nora's heart, she knows she could do nothing else but go.

Since she woke, only a firefight can thaw her frozen bones.

-

This is how it starts: with battle-cries of long-since dead, twisted, withered corpses long since left to rot, ambient radiation caressing her skin.

This is how it ends:

"Thanks for your assistance, civilian--"

"When I find a civilian in this clusterfuck, I'll pass along your thanks."

-

"Thanks for your assistance, civilian--"

This is what Nora sees:

Power armor.

People playing brave.

The injured, the dead.

This is where Nora is: Georgetown, Massachusetts, November, 2287. Fresh out of a firefight, and alone.

-

"Thanks for your assistance, miss."

This is where Nora is: Alaska, the summer of 2070. Freshly having saved Rhino Company's collective asses.

This is what Nora sees:

The dead and the dying, and the morons that lead them into a trap.

“When you find a _lady_ , fucking let me know.”

-

Nora's tongue lashes where her fists can't.

-

"I-- sorry. You're not a civilian, are you?"

"Not even a little. Let's get your boy inside before he bleeds to death. Kid's looking a little green."

"I'm a _knight,_ " the injured man protests. "And it's just a scratch." He has his arms wrapped around his torso. He's bleeding like a banshee and she thinks: they went for the soft belly, so they could drag his guts out and eat him alive.

She's already seen it happen. She'll never forget.

Nora raises an eyebrow, tugs her hat and handkerchief off. "Could have fooled me. You're missing the plate armor and you're green around the gills already. You, girl-- is there any clean water and antibiotics in this place? Those fuckers play dirty. We don't want sepsis or gangrene to settle in."

"We have stims?"

"Just bring me all your medical supplies."

The man in the power armor considers her quite seriously; she's wrapped in thick leather around her torso and extremities, and she's wearing a gorget about her throat. A Minute Man's hat to cover her hair and scar, and a blood-red handkerchief to hide her face and _those_ scars. "Are you a doctor?"

He asks it and she knows he already knows the answer to be _no._

"Spend enough time in the trenches, and everybody's a doctor."

-

She does not like the future. But it's here now, and so is she. She has to live with that, and if she has to live with it without her boys, everyone else sure as fuck does too.

-

Paladin Danse lets her nap in a corner, and she goes eagerly enough.

When she looks at him, all she sees is power armor scorched by fire, and when she sleeps, that's all she dreams.

Maybe tomorrow will be a better day.

-

Maybe it won’t.


	4. Sulfer

When she was in the Army, Nora was a Lieutenant and then she wasn't, and then she was again, and now she's a General.

The Army taught her so much, how to kill and how to shoot, how to be strong and how to talk and bite her tongue when she really had to. And she knew how to give a shit before that, how to care for other people; the Army had just extrapolated _protecting my people_ by making everyone her people.

But it was her boys who taught her how to live.

She had learned to love them all on her own.

-

The Sunshine Tidings Co-Op isn't much. It was a retirement community before the bombs dropped, and now it's a place where Nora invites people to live, so it's her place, and they're her people.

They're her people groaning inside the mess hall cum clinic slash barracks.

-

"Gunners, ma'am," Terry Abbot says when she asks for the report, running bloodied hands through singed hair. "They were looking for Alynn, but she's out huntin' radstag, and when they couldn't find her they started shootin' people. When nobody spilled they just set fire to the crops and marched off."

-

This is what Nora loves about the future:

She's _ma'am,_ and her scars are pride instead of embarrassment, people look at her and stand a little prouder.

This is what Nora hates about the future:

There are raiders and gunners, super mutants and their dogs, packs of feral ghouls and far too many hungry deathclaws.

-

Nora unloads her medical supplies on a table, rolls up her sleeves, and gets to work.

Everyone's a doctor in the trenches.

She'll be a soldier when she's done.

-

They killed three settlers while they were here. Another died of their injuries before Nora made it there. Everyone else is injured in some way or another; Terry is not exempt.

She dopes six up on morphine to ease their pain. One passes in the night, but the rest pull through.

Terry has lost hope for them. But Terry is cradling an injured arm and a badly burned face where boiling tato exploded on him, and all he's taken for the pain since before she got here was a shot of whiskey before he used the rest of the bottle to clean injuries.

Sunshine Tidings is her community, the civilians her army is to be protecting, and ~~she~~ ~~they~~

_this cannot happen again._

-

Alynn comes back laden with radstag and all it's useful deliciousness, plus something Nora thinks could have been a woodchuck before the bombs fell.

Nora sends her to put it all in storage before anything else, but she doesn't miss the way her lightning-blue eyes survey the damage.

One of the houses burned down.

The graveyard is seven people larger than it was before, when it was zero and the settlement didn't have a graveyard.

-

"Alynn?"

"Misfortune," Alynn greets, and Nora is fond enough of the name, now, despite the tragedies of the wasteland. Alynn usually says her name with a fae smile that reminds her of her boys, but now Alynn surveys Sunshine Tidings and says her name like she's a child submitting herself to a scolding.

"Terry says it was Gunners."

Alynn presses her lips together. "...I wasn't here, ma'am. Couldn't say."

Nora frowns.

-

Alynn says a bunch of things without ever saying them, and Nora hears them all anyway.

-

Nora finds a brush and, because it’s there, some bright yellow paint. Then she climbs the silo.

-

She goes to find some more medical supplies for the injured, and food to send to the community for the harvest they will no longer have. The first caravan she runs into has a trio of Gunners for the guards, and it's late; the salesman invites her to camp around their fire for the night, since it's deathclaw territory.

Nora was a lawyer, and she can play the dumb housewife well.

She learns that the Gunners don't usually attack settlements, and when they do, there aren't usually people in them. They're hired to clean out super mutants and nests of ferals, and it's usually by people looking to settle.

And while they do take contracts on people, the private admits uncomfortable, looking at her CO while she speaks like she's expecting him to revoke her permission to speak, she's never, ever heard of them cutting through a settlement to get to them. Jobs like that are dirty and hurt their reputation.

-

None of it disagrees with what Alynn did not say.

-

She buys medical supplies and food from the caravan, clean water. She asks them to be on the look out for yellow paint, as well.

They have a spool of dyed yellow thread. Actually, they have a whole bushel of thread.

Nora buys all of it.

-

She trips over a half-dead group of Gunners on her way from Sunshine to Sanctuary.

Deathclaws dislike heavy artillery.

Nora loves it.

-

"Can't say I hear news about any other chapters," the newly-appointed officer grumbles as Nora works yellow sutures into his thigh. "Not unless they really take the piss. But if you haven't heard of Quincy, you've been living under a rock."

"Pretend I've been living under a rock," Nora muses wryly. It's not entirely untrue. Except that she has heard of Quincy, because that's where Preston and Marcos started, that's where the whole heart of New Sanctuary's from.

"Well, I've heard a lot of stories. But that battalion-- well, they didn't make any friends. We had trade agreements with Quincy. Jacking the town was just bullshit."

"Dale, should you be talking about this?"

"Why the fuck not, Jess? Owe the lass a story and a drink anyway, and if I'm going to die, I'm going to do it bitching about Wes."

"Tell me about Wes," Misfortune encourages.

-

So Dale does.

 


	5. Eastern Tiger

She hits Sanctuary a few days later.

Hugs her cousin, hugs her son. Hugs his brother that is not.

Orders Garvey to get some sleep, and then catches some shut-eye herself.

-

In the morning she pours herself a glass of water and wanders half-dressed into her back yard.

-

There is a man in her lawn chair. He's wearing Gunner green and nursing one of the beers she stocked in the community locker, but more than that, he’s sitting in her husband’s chair. Sharp lavender eyes watch her from behind red locks of hair.

She is not amused.

"Who the fuck are you."

"I'm Jack," Handsome Jack smiles, and it's so fucking pretty. She scowled at him. "Heard that Misfortune'd been asking about the Gunners, and thought I'd come see what she wanted to know."

-

Nora hates the future.

~~Mostly the people.~~

-

“I want to know nothing. I want to give you a warning.”

Jack’s expression shifted a bit, in a way she can’t place. Nora lets her own smile widen. She knows how it looks, in the early-morning sunshine, how it stretches the scars. She can feel her cheeks pull, the tightness of the tissue.

“I don’t have anything against you folks. But the Gunners are about to see a whole lot of smiles painted across the wasteland. Those are mine. And whoever the hell is running the lot of you need to know, those settlements are going to fight back, and then Misfortune is going to _bite._ This isn’t much a threat as it is a common courtesy so nobody gets themselves shot.”

-

She misses her boys.

But they would never forgive her if she left other people cut and dried on her way to find them, especially her own people.


	6. Small White

Nora somewhat expected Preston and Jack to be at odds, just because of the history between the last Minuteman and the Gunners. But while some of the other people in town-- Minutemen and Civilians alike-- were somewhat twitchy of him, Preston Garvey was surprisingly not one of them.

"He's with you, ma'am, isn't he?"

She shrugged. "Not entirely convinced he isn't just here for the beer."

Preston blinked at her, thrown off by the amusement. "Do you.. want me to remove him?"

She let her lips pull into a grin, felt it tug at her cheeks. "He isn't causing any trouble yet, so if you're not objecting to it, he can stay a while longer." Especially since he was dropping info about the Gunners like a broken eave. She let her attention slide to the river. Gunner Jack was entertaining the little ones while her cousin was washing linens.

She couldn't hear what they were saying from here, but she hadn't seen her cousin smile like that in a long time. She felt her own smile waver a bit.

"We'll keep a watch on him. Strengthen the perimeter when he leaves, make sure the guns are well-tooled and the watch well-rested."

Preston shifted uncomfortably at her side. "Do you think he's here to spy on us?"

Nora frowned this time. It seemed so unlikely, but it was the future. She couldn't be sure of anything now.

"...I think he's here to give me his general."


	7. Large White

A lifetime ago, or maybe a little more, there had been a man and a woman, and they had a baby boy, and they lived a perfect life. And they, Nora was sure, were very much lying, and very much dead.

Perfection came at a cost, and that was why she was having to leave town barely two weeks after having arrived. Her boys were not going to come back to her if she sat around twiddling her thumbs. She could still remember the face of the scarred man as he stared back at her through the glass, grinning, Phoenix held at her breast; _two will do for now_.

Two would do, until Nora force-fed him a bullet. And as fate would have it, she wasn't a sniper; she couldn't spot him from here, she couldn't _hit_ him from here.

She hiked her kit a bit higher on her shoulder and gave her cousin a one-armed hug. Both her little boys she pressed soft kisses to, the knowledge in her chest that she may never make it home a secured and truly heavy weight in her chest. But she'd bring their daddies home before she ever let something lay her in the ground.

"Codsworth?"

"Ma'am?"

"Keep them safe."

"Yes Mistress King!"

And he would. There would be _lethal_ fire thrown at the enemy, quite literally, plus truly painful dismemberment. He would be a heap of scrap before someone got to her family again. She reached up and ran a hand through loose locks of hair. She would have to retie it... But not yet. Later, once she was on the road.

Preston and a handful of Minutemen stood nearby, ready to see her off. Ready to ensure Gunner Jack _actually_ left town, considering he had walked into it between patrols.

"If you get time, General," Preston started, hesitating only a moment. "There's a good spot for a settlement you can check out. I can mark it on your map."

"If I get time," she agreed, holding out her arm so he could fiddle with the Pipboy. Considering how often he did this, she didn't have to hold his hand through the process anymore.

Her cousin rocked a slightly fussy Harvey, trying to get him to sooth back to sleep. It was late, edging to proper dark, and it was her own fault the kids were even out of their cribs. She always wanted them to be the last thing she saw before she left.

She rather preferred leaving communities at night, so anyone looking never noticed that she left; it was a habit left over from her military years. Travel quick, travel light, and do it under the cover of dark until you were far enough from base, no one you had to skirmish with could find it.

They would pitch camp at Concord, rather than Red Rocket. The community at Red Rocket didn't need for them to leave in the daylight either, but people would still be awake when she arrived to give her a list of needs.

-

Red Rocket ~~needed~~ wanted functional light bulbs. Nora scribbled in shorthand to bring candles back to them, because everybody and all their sisters wanted functional light bulbs, and there were a grand total of absolutely none of them in the Commonwealth.

The lone teenager living there wanted Manta Man Issue Eight. That one would probably be more along the lines of _actually in existence_ , and she resolved to keep an eye out for it. He had a copy of _Grognak the Barbarian_ Issue One he was willing to trade for it.

-

Of all the superheroes in the world, _Grognak_ was Nora's favorite. There was very little better than smashing something well and true with a liberal application of physical trauma.

-

She had a short list of people she was going to apply this particular fix to.

-

She made a point of refusing to hole up in the Museum of History with Jack, scaling up one of the fire escapes instead so she had access to a whole line of rooftops. It gave her walking room, and some poor soul-- well, they had died, obviously, because their corpse was up here, sun-bleached bones and tattered clothing. But they had built a lean-to, and there was a gun, some ammo, and a rolled up copy of the Boston Times.

They ate blessedly _un_ irradiated cans of pork and beans for dinner.

Jack volunteered for first watch, and Nora shoved herself up as far under the lean-to as she could go, because it started to rain.

-

Even in an irradiated hellhole, the rain smelled clean and fresh. It was a reminder that the earth would heal itself, given time enough to do so. Given a reprieve from human foolishness.

 


	8. Kaiser-i-hind

In Sanctuary, Jack had come and gone as he pleased, more or less. Nora wasn't going to arrest anybody for stepping out to take a walk, resident or non-resident. When the town got big enough that she had to enforce some sort of _law_ , she had damned well better have her boys back first, because shooting everyone was a piss-poor way to run a town.

She didn't think she'd shoot Preston.

-

~~She'd probably end up having to shoot Marcy first, and then figure out how to apologize to Jun.~~

~~If she heard one more threat about what _Marcy_ would do if Nora led raiders back to Sanctuary or told someone about the town, Marcy was going to drive her to murder, and no one would be able to blame her. ~~

-

Jack had told her more than enough about the Gunners.

He had told her where to find Wes, the man behind the Quincy Massacre. He had agreed, reluctantly, that under Wes' leadership, Gunners probably _had_ gone into her settlement and tried to find one of her people, only to shoot up the town when they hadn't found them. Wes had been letting a lot of raiders into the fold recently, apparently.

He was a little surprised that they had burnt the crops, if only because they needed to eat just as much anybody else. Real Gunners, apparently, traded with settlements, and if they had a beef with someone inside, they tried to resolve it as peacefully as they could.

-

Jack wanted her to go handle the current leadership so a better leader could step up, someone he could be proud to serve under.

Nora was still trying to figure out how Jack could think he was fooling her; he was no _follower_.

-

Everything else he said sounded true enough though.

So she'd think about it.


	9. Bhutan Glory

The Commonwealth was a fast track for people who liked to live life hard and full of bullets.

Most people didn't.

But then, Nora wasn't most people.

-

Sunshine was still holding together even though she had been away for a while. Alynn was on guard duty, but she fell back when Nora approached the settlement, helping her unloaded a kit of food and supplies as she gave a report of the last few weeks.

According to Alynn, nothing had happened.

Nora might have believed her, except Alynn had _said_ it while casting a look out at the road, and ignoring the Gunner standing beside her.

-

Two more people had died while Nora was away.

-

She visits their graves, swears that she will do better. But it's hard to protect civilians all on her own.

-

Her boys could have done it.

She's not her boys.

-

Most people in the Commonwealth only have one name that belongs to them. Jane or John or _Lilandra_ , Spot and Rain and one poor unfortunate child named Mutfruit.

Nora doesn't doubt that they have many applied terms for themselves. Names are things people give you; your parents, your friends, random people on the sidewalk. But those names, an individual does not _own_ as they do their own.

Nora does not own General, or most any other name she has ever been given. But they are still her names.

-

The name Nora _owns_ is _Misfortune_.


	10. Mountain Apollo

There was a little settlement known as Reach.

Six people lived there, two families, and it was so far out of the way and so far beyond anything that could be considered tactically advantageous that they were safe. The people had come from the North, out of Maine, and set up a little trio of ram-shackled sheds; two for people and one for the brahmin they had used to carry their things southward.

It had been settled at the bottom of a cliff's edge, more or less, sheer rock wall overlooking an expanse of the homestead and absolutely nothing else.

Halfway up the rock wall was where they had stored their valuables, because they'd brought climbing gear, and Nora had liked them pretty well, had helped them raise their second and third shed, bracket on another room to the first.

-

Nora knew them by name. Had commiserated with them, a little. Lacy had been a mother of two and a third on the way, and her husband had died on the trip. Regina and Jorgi had been-- not newlyweds, but newly together and new parents in the least.

The children had been Rye and Horatio and Atlantica, and the one on the way, Lacy had said, was going to be called River one way or the other. It was symbolic somehow, in a way Nora didn't know.

-

No traders went to Reach. Nora trekked out their way once every two months, hauling enough supplies to keep them going. They traded her melons and snap beans, mostly, because that's what they had, that's what came in early enough, but there was a huge field of razorgrain that they had planted, and they'd need help when harvest-time came.

Nora would be there for that.

-

She heads to Reach from Sunshine, because it's time to make the trip and because she had dug up enough toys and teddy-bears that the kids needed something to entertain themselves with and she _had it._

Jack follows her, not asking where they're going, and it's enough, it's reassuring, and Nora's weirdly touched by the Gunner's willingness to follow her off the beaten path and into nothing.

"I've never brought anyone this way," she admits to him. "Then again, I don't usually travel with people."

"Who's supposed to watch your back if you travel alone?" Jack wonders, and it's a question Nora can't quite answer.

Her unit is gone. Her boys are gone. Who _is_ watching her back?


	11. Cairns

When they hit Reach, passing through razorgrain fields that tugged and reached for her clothes and gear, she expects the sound of children giggling and playing. Instead she hears cries of pain and shouts at nothing, and she picks up her pace.

-

Jorgi is sitting by the cook-fire, looking a little pale, bouncing Horatio on his knee, holding Atlantica in his other hand. The other child is similarly pale, looking worried and fretful. The eldest is Rye, and she looks up at them as they leave the fields, standing and running out to them, waving her hands, shouting Nora's name in absolute delight. Jorgi nearly has a stroke at it, but Nora bends down, sweeping the child up into her arms.

She thinks she sees Jack check himself, like he'd meant to do the same thing, only to realize the young one didn't know him.

Rye throws her arms around Nora's neck and buries her face in her neck in greeting, already babbling.

Nora catches the words and constructs their meaning easily enough.

Lacy's having her baby.

She catches Jack's eye as they near the cook-fire, where Jorgi is looking absolutely relieved and still several shades of horrified. He looks surprised to find people out here, especially people she knows. She finds herself smiling behind red cloth.

"Fortune," he greets. "Didn't expect you until late."

"Didn't run into as much. Down you go, Rye, on your own feet."

"See you brought your husband this time."

Nora blanches. Jack  _ grins. _

"What? No. No, Jorgi. This is Jack, we're traveling together."

"Uh huh." Jorgi didn't look convinced.

"I'm going to help Regina with Lacy," Nora noted hastily, dropping her pack next to the old weather-worked chair by the fire so that she can abscond.

-

Lacy hasn't been in labor long. A few hours at most. Regina's done what she knows how to do, but her labor had been easy, and Lacy's  _ isn't. _

There are complications. River has turned around in her womb, and Regina frets that the babe will get tangled.

"I'm going to have to turn him around. It's not going to be pleasant, Lacy."

"Please," Lacy begs, "Save my baby. It's all I have left of Luke."

-

It's not the trenches, but Nora's the closest thing to a doctor that Reach has now.

-

Lacy's child is a little boy, a little River.

The name means so much to Nora, but the River she knew is long gone, and it clearly means more to Lacy.

"I met Luke by the river," she admits shyly, tired, after.

Nora met her boys in Alaska.

She's not sure how she'd feel naming a child after the state.


	12. False Apollo

She doesn't usually have nightmares. Reach is quiet and peaceful, far enough out of the way that there's no raiders and no gunners and no _Institute,_ and it's like the rest of the world does not exist.

Still, nightmares happen.

-

She's never needed anyone as much as she needs her boys; her rock in the ocean, her anchor on land.

Jack is a terrible substitute, but she is glad he is here, when her world begins to fray at the edges and nightmares take hold.

-

He pulls her awake with his hand on her foot, the safest place to wake her up, and he doesn't _ask_ what it was, because he's smart like that and he's practically a soldier himself.

Shit happens. It's terrible.

Nora wonders what he dreams about, when he does get to sleep.

-

Because he doesn't ask, she tells him.

-

"I was in Alaska. My CO took a rocket to the face," her gut twists, it's hard to admit, but it's Jack, and he's being quiet. He owes an explanation for why she woke him up in the middle of the night. "I was a Lieutenant, and my equal was... well. He didn't take it well."

She bows her head in the dark, taking strength in the quiet. "I nearly lost them both."

-

She gave her first kiss to _Just Quinn,_ and he treasured it, the way she treasured him. But while she gave her heart to both of them, nothing had made it stop so quick as Quinn's scream on an Alaskan battlefield, when their Captain hit the ground, and the Chinese were _advancing._

-

She doesn't kiss Jack.

But she does lean against him, resting her back against the wall, and draws strength from that, too.


	13. Striped Blue Crow

Once, Nora had heard a story about a girl who went down a hole and found a whole new world, and she had her adventures there but when she came back up again, the world had righted itself. Nora envies her, because she went down a hole too, but when she came back up again the world was wrong and broken and she’ll never be able to fix it, to go back up and pretend it was all a dream.

\--

There was another story of another girl who was swept into the sky into a strange land, and she had her adventures, and at the end of it, she clicked her heels together and made her way home, and everything righted itself in her story, too. But Nora does not own a pair of silver boots or ruby slippers, and at any rate, she’s never been the sort of person to run from her problems.

\--

They stay in Reach for a few days, until she’s well and truly sure little River and Lacy are going to be okay. She is asked no less than three times if Jack is her husband, but two of those, at least, can be laid at the feet of children. The women seem content enough to share coy smiles and pretend to be innocent when they catch Nora watching them.

They conspire against her, somehow.

She has no idea what it is, or rather she is trying very hard not to suspect it, but she hardly plans to stick around and let them enact it. She and Jack leave in the quiet of the night, after dinner and sunset, and they make their way back into the rest of the world.

One of the closest settlements to Reach is a little cave hidden in the rocks. Well, little is subjective; there’s only one person there, and he doesn’t have much to do with Nora or anybody that comes that way, and if Nora hadn’t been paying attention the first time she had come through here, she would have never known he existed.

Jack keeps watch over her while she sorts out supplies and tucks it beneath a loose stone, where she knows he’ll find it when he ventures out for food. She honestly hasn’t found any MREs to leave behind, but sometimes allowances must be made, and she buries whatever she thinks will keep for a while in the crack.

They head on, hole up in an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and wait out a radstorm, crackling lightning and vibrating the old wood with thunder that sings in her veins.

\--

Once Nora heard a story about a girl who pricked her finger and fell asleep for a long, long time. She slept frozen and trapped in time while the world outside changed and the years raged on, ravaging what she knew into unfamiliarity, turning babes old and skeletal long before she woke.

And when she did wake, everything had changed around her: a woman out of time and out of place.


	14. Fragile Dotted Border

These words belong to Nora: they rattle in her bones, shapeless, intangible. They are unacknowledged and unrecognized, but they live and breathe and fester. They drive her even when she does not know them, an unrealized fear:

Without you, I am nothing.

\--

Here is the truth: These words are a lie.

She learned them over and over again, times when the war was tight and entrapping. For all her valor, she is only human, and humans can only survive so much. She has wrapped herself up in them, and she does not know what it is to be befret and live.

\--

Here is the truth, but keep it a secret:

Without them, she is a monster in sheepskin.

Without them, the disguise slips, and she cannot pull it on again by herself.

\--

Nora does not say: without you, I am nothing.

She does not think it. She does not realize those words exist.

What she does realize is this: 

Without them, she does not feel human.

\--

Jack is patient enough with her, even as she drags him down the long trail to visit her settlements. There are things she has not done yet; things she cannot do.

Case in point: Nora has not become so lost to walk through a radiation storm.

The people of Greentop Nursery are more than happy to let them stay through it, ever since Nora helped them that first time and then came back to build up the area. They put them up in one of the tin shacks off on it’s lonesome, eyeing the storm glowing green and wicked on the horizon.

“It’s not much,” Rachel admits, more than just a little apologetic. “And there’s only one bed. We built it for the Graces, but...”

The shack  _ isn’t _ fully furnished. But it’s liveable, with furnishings, and just a touch of lived-in. Rachel’s words grab at Nora’s shoulders. “What happened to them?”

Rachel is all of sixteen and uncomfortable talking to strangers. Nora knows this. She’s led a hard life so far. Nora has no idea what happened to her parents. She’s afraid to ask.

“..Miss Fortune, ma’am.. They died. The nursery was attacked last week.”

\--

Here is the thing about Greentop Nursery:

Nora likes the people, and they like her, even though nothing she plants grows.

The soil isn’t very thick, and very quickly digging results in stone and broken tools.

They survive primarily off rainwater, because digging a well is a bitch and a half.

Nora taught them how to give their dead bonfire funerals, because there’s no room for a graveyard.

The ashes are mixed into the loam for plant food, because the survivors have to eat and the dead no longer care.

Greentop Nursery has a huge billboard right on the edge, and when she looks, Nora’s Cheshire Smile has already been painted on it in eye-searing yellow.

\--

Rachel shows her the trunk where extra clothes are stored. The dead are wrapped in old sheets soaked in oil, and their clothes are set aside for other settlers. They managed to kill a few of the attackers, but someone had disabled all the turrets, and if it hadn’t been for the few Minutemen in the area hearing the gunshots, it would have been a lot worse.

They are nursing their own injuries, and none of them know how to repair turrets. Nora will have to fix that before she leaves, thank them. But she will do that after the storm. In the meantime, she thanks Rachel and wraps her fingers around ball chains and retreats to the shack built for the Graces.

\--

She dumps the tags on the table in the center of the shack. Doesn’t look at them again as she makes her way to the little chem locker in the closet cum bathroom. It’s mostly filled with RadAway and Rad-X, a couple things of Med-X. Farming is hard work; hard on the knees, the back, the hands. It’s no surprise to find Med-X in the box.

She brings enough RadAway and Rad-X for the two of them, sets it on the table. She manages to fish a flip lighter and a few candles from a drawer just in time, as she hears the first rumble of kinetic energy present itself as thunder. The gaps around the door glow eerie green.

For the moment, the electricity holds out.

Jack is splayed on the couch, looking at ease and at home and inviting, tempting.

She makes a point to sit down across from him in the lone cushy chair, takes a shot of Rad-X as preventative medicine. Steel walls can only keep out so much radiation.

“Tell me some more about Gunners Plaza.”

Sharp eyes lit up at her words, although handsome, smiling Jack didn’t move otherwise. She didn’t know what he could be thinking, was a little afraid to ask. But it didn’t matter what he thought, in the end.

\--

They talk for hours. In her mind, Nora plans her route of attack, variable based on conditions. It is, apparently, due south of Diamond City, where Nora needs to go and hasn’t yet been. People talk, sometimes, of a detective who can find people who are missing. A detective who would help her look for missing people. 

But that is for later, and for now, she’s concerned about other things.

Halfway during their conversation, her geiger counter ticking up, Nora takes a dose of RadAway.

\--

Somewhere near two in the morning, the air raid siren goes off, and she hears bullets and shouts, nothing quiet, unplanned and imprecise. Radiation glows low and evil beneath the gap of the door.

She feels like spitting it herself. She was sleeping  _ well. _

Jack grumbles beside her, but he’s up, too, and it makes her feel better. Some morons are visiting, and she’ll send them packing with a smile.

\--

She’s tired of people messing with her settlements.

\--

This is the truth, spread the word: 

War makes monsters out of men.


	15. Blue Mountain

When she was a little girl, she dreamed of sailing across the ocean, dressed as a pirate and captain of her own ship. But that was when she was a very little girl, and it had been a long, long time ago.

When she was a teenager, she dreamed of-- well. She was a teenager. She dreamed of a lot of things.

When she realized none of those things would be, Nora put a pen to paper and signed away her soul.

-

It was after she signed away everything that she was, that Nora learned something of the most vital importance:

Only when she had nothing did she manage to learn what she really wanted the most.

-

Nora vomits her guts out after the radstorm passes, her stomach twisting sick as she rides out the purge of radiation in her blood.

It’s unhappy, to do that. But it’s even unhappier to die. She curls herself up into the little closet around a bucket and resists the urge to crawl into the tub for a cold bath. That won’t help her.

It would probably make it worse.

Jack is polite of her situation. He dosed her up with another shot of Rad-X, poured RadAway down her throat. She wants to climb out of her own skin but she doesn’t; she wants to climb out of her clothes and she doesn’t.

Jack doesn’t look worried. Nora would be more sure of his self-assurance if she didn’t know, if she couldn’t tell, that he was watching her through one of the mirrors. For all he seems to be giving her privacy, he’s been facing that direction since the fight.

Well, he’d been facing that direction since she patched up her arm.

She has no idea if he’s watching her to make sure she doesn’t keel over and die, or if he’s watching her for some other reason, but she’s glad someone is looking out for her right now anyway. Left to her own devices, she’d probably still be trying to figure where to find a vein.

-

She doesn’t want to think about the steroids in her system from the Stimpak he shoved in her shoulder. It throbs dully but she can’t tell how healed it is; she insisted on a bandage for the sake of a bandage, the novelty, maybe.

She uses stims now in the future more than she ever did in the army, and she doesn’t want to think about what that means for her.

-

Nora lays her head against the cool porcelain of the bathtub and closes her eyes.

It’s not morning yet. Nobody will fault her for waiting to deal with the corpses for another several hours.

Outside the closet, Jack waits on the chair, and Nora wonders, distant, where in the marching line Handsome Gunner Jack walks.

-

An army has two types of people: Those who lead and those who follow.

Most of those who are leading are followers. Most of the followers are followers.

Sometimes, rarely, there are followers who are leaders and leaders who are leaders.

The best leaders are those who start walking, unaware there are people following in their footsteps..

What matters is who people fall into line behind. 

-

Two hundred years later, and that doesn’t change.


	16. Pink Rose

They head to Malden after she catches some sleep and her Geiger counter decides she's back within the safe zone. It's good of Vault-tec to design something that measures ambient radiation in the air.

From Malden it's easy to follow the roads southward, heading to Charlestown. They pass a few radstag on the way, but no raiders and no gunners, no caravans. It's quiet and peaceful, and the most they have to worry about is the local wildlife.

-

On one hand, Nora is pleased by the lack of human contact. On the other, it feels like the set-up to a bad porno: _two soldiers bereft of civilization seek comfort in each other's arms._

-

Yeah.

No.

That doesn't happen.

-

She would totally watch the hell out of it, though.

-

What the lack of people does do is provide silence, and Nora spends a lot of time thinking instead of trying to fill it. She hasn't been this far south since before the bombs dropped, and the world has changed something significant in two hundred years and some change.

Her memories of the town are hazy at best. She's been out of the Vault for a fair while now, and the world is significantly different. The map on the pip-boy isn't accurate anymore, there are creeks and bogs and new-found ponds. But it's accurate enough, and they're in the process of updating it the more she travels.

Maybe one day, they'll have a cartographer to do a decent survey.

-

Charlestown Bridge is where the real trouble starts.

It's not raiders, or mutants. Those are easy to handle.

It's _Jack._

-

Or, rather, it's not Jack.

It's Nora.

He's getting under her skin. She's getting used to him being there, watching her back, and it's only been a month.

-

She can't let that happen.

_Her boys are gone._

-

~~Jack's not even one of _hers._ He's a _Gunner._ Right now he belongs to that damned _Captain Wes._ ~~

-

~~Her boys are gone, stolen, and she'll get them back if she has to burn the world down.~~

~~She'll deal with everything else, everyone else, after that. After she has them back.~~

-

"I heard there's a community on this side of Boston," Nora admits, checking the clip in her rifle. Around them a wash of blood and guts and green-stained tissue paints the ground. She's covered in filth, irradiated blood from the blow-back, but at least it isn't glowing. It's a mess but her heart is thundering in her chest from the adrenaline, and she feels _alive._

Also filthy.

"Goodneighbor? Yeah, I've been there. Decent place."

She raises an eyebrow at him. "I heard it was full of cut-throats and cut-purses. The _undesirables_ the other settlements don't want."

Settlers usually said it with the same air civilians had said _Chinese._ Nora thinks if they’re not raiders then they’re probably okay, and she’s not about to judge people she hasn’t met that aren’t already shooting at her.

It’s still weird to hear a different opinion.

Jack shrugs, wiping off his knife on a rag that was probably some poor vagabond's pants at one point. "Everybody's welcome there, and some people don't approve of that, but Goodneighbor has rules of it's own, and the mayor enforces them."

 _He's been there,_ Nora notes. "What's it like? In Goodneighbor?"

Something flickers in the depths of lilac eyes. Nora can't place it, doesn't try too hard. It's calculating and maybe a touch predatory, and ~~she likes it more than she should~~

it doesn't matter.

"Why?" Jack's voice, at least, only belies the most base of curiosity. She doesn't hear anything else in his words.

That alone makes it safe to smile at him. She wants to tug her gorget off her throat and shuck out of her armor and _breathe_ without the weight pressing her down to earth. She can't yet.

Not here.

"Because I? Need a bath."

"There's a river," Jack says, and oh, that smile was just _unfair._

-

Nora hasn't bathed in a river since before Alaska.

There is no way in hell she's doing it now.

But she considers it, because there's just an edge to his smile that's tempting, just enough of him bent on _might be interested_ that a very small part of her wonders, and then a larger part discards.

-

Just enough promise-threat.

-

By the time they get to Goodneighbor, she _really_ needs that bath.


End file.
